Little Caesars franchise cost: $376,500 to $1,769,200 per the 2026 FDD, a $20,000 fee, 6% royalty plus up to 7% advertising, and no Item 19 earnings data.
Quick answer A Little Caesars restaurant costs $376,500 to $1,769,200 to open per Item 7 of the 2026 FDD, including a $20,000 initial franchise fee. The royalty is 6% of gross sales or $300 a week, whichever is greater, and the advertising obligation runs up to 7%. Item 19 discloses no sales or earnings figures.
A Little Caesars restaurant costs $376,500 to $1,769,200 to open, per Item 7 of the 2026 Little Caesar Enterprises, Inc. disclosure document (issuance date March 27, 2026). That range includes a $20,000 initial franchise fee. The ongoing load is a royalty of 6% of gross sales or $300 a week, whichever is greater, plus an advertising obligation the franchisor can set as high as 7% of gross sales.
The cover page adds the number most cost guides skip: $277,000 to $504,000 of the initial investment is paid to the franchisor or its affiliate. Most of that goes to Blue Line, the affiliated distributor that sells the required equipment package and, after opening, most of your food and paper.
Then there is the gap. Item 19, the section where a franchisor may disclose what its restaurants sell and earn, contains no numbers. Little Caesar Enterprises states that it makes no representations about the past performance of company-owned or franchised outlets. That makes this the largest pizza system in our database that gives a buyer a seven-figure cost estimate and no revenue figure to divide it by. Everything below is built from the document as filed, with the Item and page cited, so you can see exactly which parts of the decision the FDD can support and which it cannot.
Item 7 (pages 22 to 25) prices a single traditional restaurant of 1,200 to 1,600 square feet. It excludes the cost of buying real property and Food Truck franchises.
| Item 7 line | Low | High | Paid to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Initial franchise fee | $20,000 | $20,000 | Little Caesar Enterprises |
| Rent (one month) | $1,500 | $8,500 | Landlord |
| Leasehold improvements | $50,000 | $1,000,000 | Suppliers |
| Equipment and technology from Blue Line | $235,000 | $460,000 | Blue Line |
| Other fixtures, equipment and signage | $15,000 | $158,000 | Suppliers |
| Grand opening advertising | $15,000 | $15,000 | Little Caesar Enterprises |
| Training expenses | $12,000 | $16,500 | Hotels, airlines, other |
| Opening food, paper, chemicals, supplies | $7,000 | $9,000 | Blue Line |
| Insurance | $500 | $1,200 | Insurers |
| Utilities | $1,000 | $9,000 | Utilities |
| Licenses and permits | $2,500 | $25,000 | Governments |
| Additional funds, 3 months | $17,000 | $47,000 | Various |
| Total | $376,500 | $1,769,200 |
Three lines explain almost all of the $1.39 million spread.
Leasehold improvements, $50,000 to $1,000,000. This is the build-out, and Note 3 says the cost “varies considerably” with your real estate interest, the size of the restaurant, and whether you or the landlord develops the site. A second-generation pizza space in a strip center lands near the floor. A ground-up freestanding building with a drive-thru Pizza Portal lands near the ceiling. Note 3 also excludes “extraordinary costs” such as impact fees, utility connections, permitting variances and extensive redesign, which is where ground-up projects tend to run over.
Equipment and technology, $235,000 to $460,000. This is the Blue Line package: the Pizza Portal pickup equipment, the Caesar Vision system, a walk-in cooler, ovens, hood and ventilation, water chiller, freezer, prep stations, tile and decor, and smallwares down to the pizza cutters (Item 5, page 8). Item 5 bases the estimate on recent freestanding openings. It does not include the M.I.K.E. system, which is optional today, though the FDD reserves the right to require it later.
Other fixtures, equipment and signage, $15,000 to $158,000. Signs must come from an approved vendor list (Item 8), and this line scales with how visible the site is.
Two features of the table are easy to miss. First, the grand opening line is a flat $15,000 at both ends. Note 5 says the franchisor will either take the $15,000 and run the campaign itself, “with complete discretion on how and when to make expenditures,” or require you to spend at least that amount yourself. Second, the $17,000 to $47,000 of additional funds covers three months of operating shortfall “excluding royalty and advertising contributions.” Those fees still have to be paid from day one, so your real cash cushion needs to be larger than the line implies.
There is also a cost that sits outside Item 7 entirely. During the term you must refurbish the restaurant within 6 months of written notice. The franchisor cannot require it sooner than 5 years after construction or the last refurbishment, and caps your obligation at $150,000, “over and above the cost of required equipment” (Item 7, Note 3). On a 10-year term, plan for one. Our Item 7 walkthrough covers the other costs these tables routinely leave out.
The standard initial franchise fee is $20,000, due in full when Little Caesar Enterprises approves you as a franchisee and non-refundable once you sign (Item 5, page 8). The discounts are unusually generous for a brand this size:
Item 5 says plainly that fees are not uniform as a result. In fiscal 2025 the franchisor collected initial fees “ranging from $0 to $20,000” (page 9).
Territory Reservation Agreement. If you want to reserve an area for more than one restaurant, you pay a Territory Reservation Fee of $10,000 per restaurant in the development schedule, for one to ten restaurants. Item 7’s second table prices a four-restaurant agreement at $41,000 to $45,000: $40,000 of reservation fees plus $1,000 to $5,000 of legal and accounting costs, all on top of the full Item 7 cost of each restaurant. If you open each restaurant by its deadline, $2,500 of that restaurant’s reservation fee is credited against its franchise fee. Miss a deadline and the fee is simply gone; it is non-refundable.
Two other Item 5 charges matter if you are buying rather than building. Little Caesar Enterprises holds a right of first refusal on franchised restaurants, and it “may charge you a fee to acquire” that right when you buy an existing restaurant. There is no standard amount; it is negotiated, and the franchisor collected one such fee in 2025.
See the full Little Caesars data sheet
The royalty is the greater of 6% of gross sales or $300 for each one-week period, drawn weekly by EFT (Item 6, page 11). The $300 floor equals 6% of $5,000 a week, about $260,000 a year. A restaurant below that pays a higher effective rate. Gross sales are defined broadly: they include delivery fees and other off-premises revenue and any business interruption insurance proceeds, less sales tax collected.
The advertising fee is “up to 7% of Gross Sales, as determined by us.” Item 11 (page 38) explains that the franchisor allocates that obligation among the Caesar Fund, a local advertising cooperative if you belong to one, and your own local spend, and can change both the allocation and the amount. In 2025 the Caesar Fund spent 79.9% on media, 18.1% on production and 1.8% on research (Item 11, page 39). The FDD is explicit that the franchisor is not obligated to spend anything in your area or in proportion to what you contribute.
Together, royalty and advertising can claim 13 cents of every sales dollar. Because the FDD gives no sales figure, the honest way to state the cost is per $100,000 of sales: up to $13,000.
The smaller recurring fees, nearly all payable to Blue Line, add up:
| Item 6 fee | Amount |
|---|---|
| Caesar Vision annual support | Up to $3,750 a year; currently $3,120 |
| Digital transaction fee | Up to $0.40 a transaction; currently $0.36, plus up to $0.10 aggregator fee on marketplace orders |
| Security and technology fee | Up to $0.09 per card transaction; currently $0.06 |
| Learning Management System | Currently $260 a year |
| Restaurant Dashboard | $25 a month if elected or required |
| Conference fee deposit | $2,500 a year for the first 3 years, refunded if you attend |
| Transfer fee | $5,000 per restaurant (change of control) |
| Renewal fee | $5,000 |
| Relocation fee | $2,500 |
Third-party delivery is the line to model carefully. Orders through outside marketplaces carry a service fee of up to 25% of the food and beverage order, currently 18% to 22%, deducted by the delivery provider before your store is paid (Item 6, page 12). Little Caesars’ own app routes delivery through DoorDash under an exclusive agreement that runs to February 2029 (Item 8, page 26).
Item 6 also includes several penalties worth reading before you sign: $1,000 a day in liquidated damages for failing to keep the required hours, interest of up to 18% a year on late payments, and a $10,000 draw from your bank account at expiration or termination to cover de-identification costs.
Nothing is disclosed. Item 19 (page 67) reads, in full substance: “We do not make any representations about a franchisee’s future financial performance or the past financial performance of company-owned or franchised outlets.” The franchisor also does not authorize its employees to make any, orally or in writing. The single exception is that a buyer of an existing restaurant may be given that location’s actual records.
That is an unusual position for a system with 586 company-owned restaurants, which generate exactly the data an Item 19 would draw on. It leaves you with three sources, none in the FDD:
For context, the pizza brands that do publish figures report annual medians from about $830,000 to more than $1.2 million (see the peer table below). Those are other systems with different prices, formats and dayparts. They show you what a disclosure looks like, not what a Little Caesars sells. Our explainer on what Item 19 is covers why the absence matters for lenders, and the Little Caesars financials page summarizes what the filing does disclose.
Item 20 is the most informative section of this FDD, because it shows what owners actually did over three years.
| Year | Franchised at start | Opened | Terminated | Non-renewed | Ceased operations | Franchised at end | Company-owned at end |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 3,599 | 83 | 0 | 20 | 21 | 3,641 | 575 |
| 2024 | 3,641 | 101 | 0 | 0 | 41 | 3,701 | 580 |
| 2025 | 3,701 | 109 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 3,788 | 586 |
Source: Item 20, Tables 1, 3 and 4 (pages 68 and 76 to 77). The total system ended 2025 at 4,374 restaurants.
Read three things from it.
Growth is steady and accelerating. Franchised openings rose from 83 to 101 to 109, and net franchised growth went from 42 to 60 to 87 restaurants a year. The franchisor projects 108 new franchised openings and 10 company openings in the next fiscal year, and reports 43 signed franchise agreements for restaurants not yet open (Table 5, page 78).
Exits are low. The franchisor terminated zero franchised restaurants in three years. Closures for other reasons were 22 in 2025, about 0.6% of the starting base. The 20 non-renewals in 2023 dropped to zero in the next two years.
Turnover is high. Table 2 shows 253 restaurants transferred between franchisees in 2023, 316 in 2024 and 239 in 2025: 808 ownership changes in three years. In 2025 alone, 239 transfers against 3,701 restaurants at the start of the year is about 6.5% of the franchised base changing hands. Georgia led with 40, Florida had 28, Tennessee 22 and Pennsylvania 19. Transfers are not failures, and some reflect multi-unit operators consolidating. But in a system with no Item 19, those 808 sellers are the people who know what a restaurant earns, and Exhibit G lists every franchisee who had a restaurant transferred in 2025. Call them.
| Brand | Item 7 investment | Fee | Royalty | Item 19 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Little Caesars | $376,500 to $1,769,200 | $20,000 | 6% or $300 a week | None |
| Domino’s | $231,450 to $743,500 traditional | Up to $10,000 | 5.5% | $25,160 median weekly sales, 6,518 franchised stores (2024) |
| Papa John’s | $281,485 to $890,267 standard | $5,000 to $25,000 | 5% of net sales | $1,043,433 median, 2,389 franchised restaurants |
| Marco’s Pizza | $286,477 to $811,186 | $25,000 | 5.5% | $832,403 median, 997 franchised stores (2025) |
| Mountain Mike’s | $356,000 to $993,946 | $30,000 | 5% | $969,285 median (2025) |
| Jet’s Pizza | $627,500 to $843,000 | $30,000 | 12% of acquired inventory | None |
| Blaze Pizza | $757,000 to $1,297,100 | $30,000 | 5% | $1,225,848 median (2025) |
Figures are from each brand’s current FDD on file.
Little Caesars has the widest Item 7 range in the group and the highest ceiling, driven by its freestanding builds. Its $20,000 fee is middle of the pack, and its 6% royalty is half a point to a point above Domino’s, Marco’s and Papa John’s. What it offers in return is scale (4,374 US restaurants), a carryout model built around the Pizza Portal, and a growth rate of more than 100 franchised openings a year.
What it does not offer is the one thing every peer except Jet’s provides: a disclosed revenue figure. If two brands cost roughly the same to open and one tells you what its stores sell, the other has to be underwritten with more of your own work. Our best pizza franchises ranking covers all eleven brands, the Marco’s cost breakdown shows a full Item 19 in practice, and the pizza franchise category lists every pizza brand in our database. For the ownership and system history, see Is Little Caesars a franchise?, and the wider food and beverage category for alternatives outside pizza.
Sales are not disclosed and profit is not disclosed. A Little Caesars restaurant may be an excellent business, and 3,788 franchised locations with zero terminations suggests many are. But the FDD asks you to commit up to $1,769,200 on its word alone, and a careful buyer will not.
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About this analysis The franchise data in this article is drawn from VetMyFranchise's structured analysis of 2,300+ Franchise Disclosure Documents filed with U.S. state regulators. See our data & methodology.
The 2026 FDD estimates $376,500 to $1,769,200 to open one restaurant (Item 7). The biggest lines are leasehold improvements at $50,000 to $1,000,000, equipment and technology from the affiliate Blue Line at $235,000 to $460,000, and other fixtures, equipment and signage at $15,000 to $158,000. The range covers a 1,200 to 1,600 square foot restaurant and one month of rent, and it excludes buying real estate.
$20,000, paid in full when the franchisor approves you, and non-refundable once you sign the Franchise Agreement (Item 5). Honorably discharged veterans and qualified first responders get $5,000 off on their first restaurant. Combat-disabled veterans and Gold Star families pay no initial fee. A Food Truck franchise, open only to existing franchisees, carries a $7,500 fee. A Territory Reservation Agreement adds $10,000 per planned restaurant, with $2,500 credited back if you hit each opening deadline.
The greater of 6% of gross sales or $300 for each one-week period, collected weekly by EFT (Item 6). Gross sales include delivery fees and business interruption insurance proceeds. On top of that, you must spend up to 7% of gross sales on advertising, allocated by the franchisor among the Caesar Fund, any local cooperative, and local advertising.
The FDD does not say. Item 19 states that Little Caesar Enterprises makes no representations about past or future financial performance of franchised or company-owned restaurants. If you are buying an existing restaurant, the franchisor may give you that location's actual records. For a new build, revenue and profit have to come from existing franchisees, whose contact list is in Exhibit F.
No franchisor financing is offered. Item 7 states that Little Caesar Enterprises does not finance any portion of your initial investment. The low end of the range, $376,500, still assumes the full $20,000 fee, $50,000 of leasehold improvements and $235,000 of equipment, so lenders will be underwriting a project of at least that size.
3,788 franchised restaurants and 586 company-owned restaurants in the United States at the end of 2025, for 4,374 total (Item 20, Table 1). Franchisees opened 109 restaurants in 2025 and 22 franchised restaurants ceased operations. The franchisor projects 108 new franchised openings in the next fiscal year and reports 43 signed agreements for restaurants not yet open.
Generally 10 years from the date a new restaurant opens, with one 10-year renewal term at a $5,000 renewal fee (Item 17, page 58; Item 6). A Food Truck franchise runs 5 years. If you buy an existing restaurant, you receive only the remainder of the seller's term.
This page is part of VetMyFranchise. View all pages: llms.txt · llms-full.txt